The time spent caring for aging parents is burning out a significant portion of the working population, say officials with a home and community health service provider, leading a national social media charge for funding.

Bayshore Home Health is in the midst of a two-month Facebook campaign called Vote to Support Caregivers. It was inspired by recent election promises from federal and provincial parties.

The campaign calls for funding to establish temporary paid leave for workers struggling to provide care for elderly relatives.

"This is a real issue that's going to hit hard in the very near future and we need to address it now," said Carolanne Gillam, interim operations manager at Bayshore's Sarnia office.

About 2,000 families receive personal support and nursing services in Sarnia-Lambton, she said. For many, caring for an elderly parent can mean an additional 20 extra hours of work per week.

Most want to keep their loved ones at home, but don't have the time to provide care, said Marilee Wright, a personal support worker in Sarnia, Bright's Grove and Corunna.

"A lot don't want to go into nursing homes," she said.

Family Caregiver Leave, an Ontario Liberal 2011 platform pledge to provide up to eight weeks of job-protected time away from work is one of the promises that inspired the campaign, said company president Stuart Cottrelle.

"We can't have a system where we're paying for a person 100% to be in an institution and not helping the family when they're providing 80% of the care," he said.

The federal Liberals and other provincial parties have made similar pledges, he said.

According to the Ontario Liberal platform, the population of seniors will grow by 43% in the next 10 years.

"Trying to care for a young family plus their parents ... (caregivers) they're just getting so overloaded they get burned out," Gillam said.

Those people need to be recognized and given support, Cottrelle said.

"Especially in a community like Sarnia where you've got very hard working two-income families."

The campaign is scheduled to continue to the end of November and the Facebook page has more than 6,200 'likes.'

There are about one million people providing care for elderly relatives in Canada who need support, Cottrelle said.